[DH] A Wretched Hive (IC)

[Thragka]

Lyra

The woman looked contemptuously at Lyra. Her jaw had been badly broken at some point, and had never set properly. Her sneer accentuated the awkward asymmetry.

“It’s the buildings with the bloody big chimneys, isn’t it?” she said, pointing out of the alley and over rooftops to where gargantuan exhaust pipes were leaking out thick grey-white smoke which hovered under the hive ceiling, perhaps a couple of kilometres distant. “Stupid woman,” she muttered to herself. Evidently, she was aggravated that the prospect of a free meal had disappeared.

Nuala and Nathias

A truck had finished being packed up from one of the units in the yard, and pulled up to the gateway as Nathias joined Nuala. From the cab, the driver gestured at the pair of them.

“Step off the road please,” the woman in the booth said, getting out of her chair and waving them onto the pavement. She stepped out to join them as the truck passed. The driver gave them a quick bip from the horn as it turned onto the main road.

“I wasn’t here, I don’t do the night shift,” she said in answer to Nuala and Nathias’s questions. “But yeah, might have been the Reds, that’s what the guard on duty said. He didn’t get a good look at them though. Obviously we’re not as far down as we thought from those nuts,” she said, sharing an exasperated look with Nuala.

She looked the pair of them up and down again, trying to get their measure. “Look, did you know him? I don’t know if I can help you. This is a working yard.”

[Haval]

“Look, did you know him?”

'I doubt we've met, but I'll try not to keep you much longer. You know if anyone one else was here on the night it happened? Maybe the dead man had employees.' Nuala will take the opportunity to check for any security cameras that might have had line of sight on the crime scene.

[LeSwordfish]

"Came back after, by himself?" Carys said, milking the scandal for all it was worth. "Why, what kind of book could he have possibly wanted to purchase that he didn't want his young lady seeing?" She quirked an eyebrow at that, then furrowed it, more serious. "He didn't say what he was looking for, did he? Were you able to send him to a specific place?"

[Bennosuke]

Lyra

The woman looked contemptuously at Lyra. Her jaw had been badly broken at some point, and had never set properly. Her sneer accentuated the awkward asymmetry.

“It’s the buildings with the bloody big chimneys, isn’t it?” she said, pointing out of the alley and over rooftops to where gargantuan exhaust pipes were leaking out thick grey-white smoke which hovered under the hive ceiling, perhaps a couple of kilometres distant. “Stupid woman,” she muttered to herself. Evidently, she was aggravated that the prospect of a free meal had disappeared.

Lyra simply lets the woman's insult slide off her back as she leaves. The crone had gotten her throne and Lyra had gotten the information she needed.

She heads in the direction of the "bloody big chimney" that the woman had indicated. As Lyra gets closer, she makes sure to put her energies into drifting around the perimeter, watching for anyone in a familiar leather apron and industrial gear.

[Thragka]

Carys

The young man's eyes fluttered for a moment, as if suppressing some emotional reaction. He managed to keep eye contact with Carys. "Couldn't say. He wanted something that had been written in the Hive, or about the Hive. I suggested he try Borsen Bluff." He indicated down the road again. "West end of the Way comes out there. There are some social clubs there, you find a lot of artsy types. And yeah, bookshops."

Lyra

Navigating by the chimney, Lyra began picking her way through the small streets. Once she found her way out of the ramshackle neighbourhood, she discovered a main road leading all the way to the metalworks. The air got hazier as she walked along, the hydrocarbon fumes from the road traffic mixing with the steam leaking from the cracked pipes.

The complex occupied a couple of acres, bordered with chain-link fencing around the perimeter, although that seemed more just to demarcate the lot rather than to be an effective security measure. It took a little over a quarter of an hour to wander the whole way around, and get a look in from all angles. There were a mixture of buildings of various sizes: small offices, larger warehouses and garages, and then the furnace house from which the massive chimney rose in the centre of the plot. Almost all of the workers going in and out of that structure were wearing thick industrial aprons over their boilersuits. From outside the fence, tens of metres across the complex, they did look to Lyra like they matched the one Lem had been wearing pretty closely. She didn't catch sight of anyone who looked like the man himself, though, at any point on her loop around the works.

Nuala and Nathias

Nuala caught sight of a couple of cameras fixed on a perch above the guards hut. They spanned an arc bisected by the gateway: one pointed out onto the roadside outside the gate, while the other looked inwards across the yard. If the inner one even caught the unit with the strands of Magistratum tape, it wasn't going to record much detail at that distance. The outer camera looked like it could pick up anyone and anything going through the gate, and possibly a bit of the road beyond. On the opposite side of the road was a six-storey habblock. The windows of the upper levels certainly had a view down into the square.

"I don't think so," the guard said to Nuala's question. "I'm sorry, who did you say you were?"

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Nuala should make an Ordinary (+10) Tech-Use test.

[Haval]

Nuala nudged Nathias and pointed to the cameras. 'Doesn't mean it saw anything useful but it's worth a look.' Then she sighs as she notices that they aren't even connected. To the woman, 'Ma'am, you really should get some working cameras in here.' Nuala will answer her question though, 'Someone's a little upset with the way that the Redemption has been behaving lately. I suppose we're a fresh pair of eyes in case the Magistratum miss something.'

[LeSwordfish]

Thanking the man kindly, Carys headed off in the direction he indicated. She would be more at home amongst the bookstores maybe. Even if they did tend to look down on short-form journalism, she could still ask around for if they had seen a man by his description.

[Bennosuke]

Lyra

Navigating by the chimney, Lyra began picking her way through the small streets. Once she found her way out of the ramshackle neighbourhood, she discovered a main road leading all the way to the metalworks. The air got hazier as she walked along, the hydrocarbon fumes from the road traffic mixing with the steam leaking from the cracked pipes.

The complex occupied a couple of acres, bordered with chain-link fencing around the perimeter, although that seemed more just to demarcate the lot rather than to be an effective security measure. It took a little over a quarter of an hour to wander the whole way around, and get a look in from all angles. There were a mixture of buildings of various sizes: small offices, larger warehouses and garages, and then the furnace house from which the massive chimney rose in the centre of the plot. Almost all of the workers going in and out of that structure were wearing thick industrial aprons over their boilersuits. From outside the fence, tens of metres across the complex, they did look to Lyra like they matched the one Lem had been wearing pretty closely. She didn't catch sight of anyone who looked like the man himself, though, at any point on her loop around the works.

Lyra did her best not to sigh. A bit of knowledge had been gained. She knew where Lem likely worked. About to call it quits, an idea suddenly struck Lyra, causing a small grin to spread across her face. If all of the workers were going in and out of the same building, perhaps Lyra could find a place to watch the entrance to the furnace house. She'd have to first identify if there was a way in, and assess what sort of security she would have to skirt.

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

“That so?” the woman asked, her interest piqued. “Huh. In that case, if you want to have a look around you can go ahead as far as I’m concerned. The Magistratum have done sod all, to be honest. After it happened, they came, had a look at the unit, then taped it up and said they’d be back – and they haven’t been. So I couldn’t be arsed if they want people to stay out, it’s been weeks now. You want to have a look, be my guest.”

The site guard went back into her gatehouse kiosk, rummaging in the desk inside, still speaking over her shoulder to Nuala and Nathias. “Yeah, the cameras are just to scare hooligans off. There’s always the odd break-in, of course, but as far as I know nobody ever had to worry about a murder before.”

She found a ring of keys in a drawer. “And it’s a bit hard to imagine old Gurner picking a fight with the Reds. I’d’ve thought he was totally harmless. Doesn’t make any sense why they’d want to kill him.”

Carys

“It’s a bit of a walk,” the young man said as Carys was taking her leave. “You might want to take a rickshaw.” She could tell he was watching her go after she turned away from him.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Deduct yourself a couple of thrones if you do take a rickshaw. You can walk it, if you want, it’ll just take a good deal longer – it’s coming up on midday around now.

~

The Old Mendicant Way was surprisingly long. Although its essential character never changed, its aesthetic façade did vary a little: further west was closer to both Hyperthrow spaceport and the all-important Goldenhand complex. Local craft shops and souvenir hawkers were replaced by a class of “hostels” that claimed to be pilgrim’s inns but were obviously quite discerning in their clientele. One such inn was practically annexed to a small abbey, sharing one half of a private temple across the cloister wall with the monastic community. Absolution within arm’s reach for the interplanetary business traveller had never been more convenient.

Finally, the pedestrianised street died off, the roadway swelled, and the bicycle rickshaws were replaced by the familiar tram network. Borsen Bluff was the bank that jutted out from this side of the spire of the same name, far lower down inside of which was the Inquirer newsroom. Carys had heard of this area as something of a dilettante’s playground. Although it was at an incredible elevation – heavens, probably barely twenty levels below the Hiveskin – the proximity to both the spaceport and the economic heart of Tarsus made the hive administration ensure the infrastructure here was maintained to a high standard. Younger nobles, or those not in the line of inheritance, had started flocking to the volume several decades back, as a place to be free of their dynastic shackles, or to pursue passion projects until their real lives began. With them had come the sponsored cadres of Magistratum, who had quickly set about clearing the neighbourhood of riff-raff. These days Borsen Bluff was chic and gentrified, full of bright young things who exalted themselves as counter-culture and never knew want.

Carys had heard of a couple of clubs where her name would doubtless be enough for someone to sign her in as a guest for the day, where she could be both a fashion statement to show off and a prole to impress until the socialite grew bored with her. A bookshop wouldn’t be difficult to find, regardless – from fluff in the T.I.’s Society pages that she hadn’t written herself, she was led to believe that there were some charming streets that should be quite pleasant to amble along. She had an inkling, though, that one way or another, she’d need to have someone in the know educate her as to what literature was currently the trendiest.

Lyra

The main entrance to the metalworks complex had a gatehouse with turnstiles for pedestrians and rising barriers for vehicles – no doubt they checked for some sort of identification there. She had passed a couple of spots on her loop of the grounds where she’d had an angle on the entry to the furnace building, but neither had been fantastic: one was obtuse, and missed one half of the wide doorway, and the other gave her a look at only a few yards of ground before other buildings obstructed the view. Of course, the chainlink fencing was nothing special, and surely wouldn’t hold up to a pliers. She’d seen only one security guard patrolling inside the complex on the entire loop around.

Opposite the main entrance, across the busy carriageway, was what looked like a manufactory built into a long six-storey block: she could see workers sat at textile machines through the windows. That building would also give her a good angle down on the entrance to the steel mill furnaces, she reckoned – her Arbites training hadn’t worn off yet.

[Haval]

'Yeah that's the Magistratum for you.' Nuala said with feeling. 'And I don't think the Reds need a reason to act like that, but we should check to see if he owed them money or something.' Nuala will take the keys if offered or else will go with the woman to Gurner's part of the yard.

[Bennosuke]

Lyra scowls, trying her best not to let frustration set in. If she had honed her skills in sneaking and picking locks, perhaps she could manage her way in, but Lyra didn't have those sorts of skills. She was going to have to do something a little drastic... maybe a little stupid. She froze that scowl on her face, straightening her posture and taking on the familiar persona of a hardnosed hardline Arbitrator. Keeping the hard look on her face, Lyra marches to the main entrance. Meeting the eyes of one of the guards with the same hard apathetic scowl she says, "I need a moment of your time," before quickly flashing her Arbitrator badge, and doing her best to hide her name on the badge with her thumb. "This is official business and we need to keep things quiet," she orders.

[Thragka]

Carys

It didn’t take long to find an elegant little boutique with a display of softbacks sitting within the bay window – on a table that looked like actual wood, at that. Inside, a motley collection of wares was tended to by a man of indeterminate age but undeniable breeding. He looked down his long nose through his huge round spectacles at Carys, smiling in the manner of a childless uncle waiting to see how intelligent a young relation was. He held his arms crossed, thrumming his heavily ringed fingers on the puffy sleeves of his black tunic.

“My dear! How might I assist you this afternoon?”

Nuala and Nathias

“No rhyme or reason to what the Reds do,” the guard agreed. “But I can’t deny I’d feel better if there was at least some reason for whatever happened to Mr. Gurner.”

She walked them across the yard to the closed unit, and turned a key in the lock of the door. She paused for a moment, looking at the green CRIME SCENE DO NOT ENTER tape still stretched across the frame of the door. Then she shrugged. “Sod it, they’re not coming back.” With a final quarter turn of the key, she pushed, and the tape snapped as the door swung inwards.

Immediately inside was a small hallway, occupied only by a coatrack with a single thin plastic jacket fluttering in the gust from the door. On the right, an open double doorway led into the main workshop, which from the look of it took up the ground floor of the unit. Nuala and Nathias could see some worktables and cabinets spaced out on the floor in the gloom. After those doors, the hallway became a stairwell, leading up to the higher level. The air was stale. It had been weeks since anyone was inside.

The guard reached for a light switch within arm’s reach of the door they were coming in by. Nothing happened when she flicked it. “This unit’s probably been turned off at the box,” she said. “I’ll go switch it back on. Just don’t run away on me, alright?” She shot the pair of them a grumpy look, and stepped back out, walking across the yard towards the gateway again.

Lyra

The pudgy plant guard sitting behind the raised desk in the gatehouse looked entirely disinterested in Lyra’s appearance, until she flashed her badge – then it was if she’d set a fire under the seat of his trousers. He jumped to attention, giving a spluttering cough as he tried to quickly clear his throat.

“Of course, uh, officer!” he said, eyes wide. Lyra’s demeanour was certainly having the effect she’d intended. “What, I mean, how can I help you, sir, ma’am, sir?”

[LeSwordfish]

Carys brought out a medium-grade smile. "I was hoping you could help me find someone - a friend of mine came through this area a little while ago." She described her quarry. "Apparently he was looking for local history books, or something on the history of the hive? Am I in the right place where he might have been looking for that?"

[Haval]

Once the guard had gone Nuala will tell Nathias, 'If anyone bothers to check maybe you're the one in charge.' She would have to see if he would make her one of those IDs at some point. She'd even pay him.

It was dark, but until the guard put the lights on she'll have a look round to see what Gurner actually had made for a living.

[Bennosuke]

Lyra

The pudgy plant guard sitting behind the raised desk in the gatehouse looked entirely disinterested in Lyra’s appearance, until she flashed her badge – then it was if she’d set a fire under the seat of his trousers. He jumped to attention, giving a spluttering cough as he tried to quickly clear his throat.

“Of course, uh, officer!” he said, eyes wide. Lyra’s demeanor was certainly having the effect she’d intended. “What, I mean, how can I help you, sir, ma’am, sir?”

Lyra stifled her grin, keeping her satisfaction inside. "Arbiter will do just fine, sir," Lyra orders flatly. She leans in towards the pudgy officer, darting her eyes from side to side furtively as if she were afraid of being overheard. In a near whisper she says, "My office has reason to believe that a small number of workers at this plant are members of a heretical seditionist cult. You will give me access to whatever form of employee records this factory keeps so that I can conduct my investigation, necessary to rooting out this... evil."

[-Sentinel-]

'If anyone bothers to check maybe you're the one in charge.'

"Sure thing," said Nathias.

He turned on his data-slate just to have a bit of light to see by.

"Before you move anything, let's try to see if it looks like someone's been searching the place before us."

[Haval]

'Other then the Redemptionists. Do we even know how Gurner died?' Had the Magistratum even cleaned up the mess?

[Thragka]

Carys

“You are in the right place he might have looked, though not the right place he would have found such texts,” the proprietor said, a playful spark flashing in his eyes. “If indeed he were looking for them. My catalogue is more literary than factual. I imagine, though, that such a friend as you describe could be pointed in the right direction. If he asked the right questions.”

Nuala and Nathias

Between Nathias’s dataslate and the light getting around the edges of the large shutter door at the front, there was enough light in the workshop to make out the contents of the room in broad details. It was the size of a very large home garage; to measure it another way, it was probably slightly larger than the entire parlour that Nathias used as both his living room and workspace in his small hab. The two worktable islands were in the rear half of the space, mostly clear save for some loose wrenches and the odd piece of what looked like scrap metal. On the back wall and around the sides were a couple of small countertops in front of perforated panelling. Small tools – screwdrivers, drill bits, rods and measuring tapes – were hung neatly from the slots. There were a number of cabinets of various shapes, and some plastic barrels under one of the counters.

The front end of the workshop was somewhat messier. Even in the shadows, the light from Nathias’s dataslate reflected off the warped circular crater in the back of the shutter door. A plastic barrel like the ones in the back was on its side off to the right side, spilling taped rods of multicoloured wiring out onto the floor. A drill lay on the ground, close to a broken clock. In the centre of the floor, the absence of a body, a rich dark stain on the concrete, and a smell that hinted of iron.

The door in the hallway opened again. The site guard flicked the light switch again. After a protracted hum, they came on this time, overhead fluorescents lending a burgundy colour to the stain on the workshop floor.

The guard looked in through the door from the hallway. “Constables took the body away, but didn’t do much else. There’s a broken window upstairs in his office – that’s how they got in. Reg, who was manning the gate at the time, said he thought he saw people on the roof after he heard the gunshot.”

Spoiler: OOC

Show

At least in the workshop on the ground floor, it doesn't look particularly like this place has been disturbed recently. You can make a Search test at +20 now that the lights are on to look more specifically.

Lyra

“Uh … let me call someone for you,” the guard said. He lifted a vox handset from the desk. “Ms Amin?” he said into it. A muttered conversation followed. Lyra caught the word “Arbiter”, and then several times “cult”. He flashed Lyra a nervous smile as he put the handset back down. “One of our admin will be along shortly, ma’a- uh, Arbiter.”

Lyra spotted the woman coming to meet her almost as soon as she had stepped out the doors of the small office block on the west end of the site – she had the walk of somebody serious on the way to sort something out. Professionally dressed in a dark blue skirt and matching jacket, as she got closer Lyra could make out thick black hair whose curls had been forced into a neat, tight bun. She stepped into the gatehouse and treated Lyra to a sterile smile. “Arbiter. I am Puan Amin, assistant site manager. Please, come with me. Thank you, Simms,” she said said, twitching the briefest glance towards the guard behind the desk as she turned and led Lyra into the complex. She set a quick pace. They cut across the painted lines on the tarmac guiding vehicles around the plant, heading straight back for the office block Ms Amin had appeared from. Lyra could see the doors of the furnace house directly as they swung wide past it. A few workers in jumpsuits were staring, though whether it was at Lyra or at Amin, Lyra wasn’t sure.

“I understand from Mr Simms the reason for your being here is quite serious, Arbiter …” she said as they walked, waiting for a name. “Esmark-Berzelius Metalworks will assist you in any way we can, of course. I am having the records you requested brought to my office.” Her tone was neutral, as if this was just another professional obligation in a day’s work. When they entered the reception at the ground floor of the office block, fewer people inside bothered to take notice. Most people in the lobby were dressed more like Amin than the labourers outside.

They took an elevator up to the fifth floor, and walked along a carpeted floor, past conference rooms to a large office. Amin’s desk was at the far end; near the door, a young woman in a white shirt and a thin headdress was placing a box of files on a low recaf table, on which already waited a carafe of water and drinking glasses. The employee nodded briefly at Amin and exited.

“Mandi,” Amin called. The younger woman stopped. “How many more?” the manager asked.
“Just one other box, Ms Amin.”
“Thank you,” Amin said. The young woman gave her another nod and went to get the rest of the records. Amin turned to Lyra. “Please let me know what else you might need. Are there specific names you’re looking for?”

Titia

Titia returned to the level of the canteen, and picked her way along the road Lem had pointed them down until the lock-ups transitioned into large warehouses. Every building seemed to have something wrong with it, from broken windows to missing sections of roofing. Some had chains across the door handles, plastered with papers Titia knew marked them as condemned, even if she couldn't read the words; some were just carcasses gutted by fire. Signs of other people got fewer and fewer, but when Titia did see other souls, they were people like her: scroungers and squatters who had nowhere better to be than abandoned storehouses and empty shells of manufactories.

She walked for a while, and was beginning to wonder how she would find the chapel, when she saw down a side street the small squat building whose doors had been daubed with a crude red Aquila. An exterior panel that might once have displayed the business's sign was empty on the wall. In front of it stood a plaster cast of a clerical figure in robes. Its blunt features had been coated in the same red paint used to mark the Aquila on the doors beside it.

[Haval]

Nuala wrinkled her nose at the smell. She wondered if Gurner had known what was about to happen. The workshop suggested he had been a man after own heart. 'Did he fix things?' She'll look at the workstations to see if there was anything that stood out to her among the tools. There was always the chance that he was doing something that the Mechanicus might disapprove of.

To Nathias, 'If there's any paperwork in the office you'll have to take it. I probably won't be able to get anything useful out of it.' Nuala was a little embarrassed to admit to her illiteracy especially with the guard here.

Spoiler: ooc

Show

Common Lore (Imperium) in case Gurner was some sort of Heretek
Vs. Int 34
(1d100)[17]

Search vs. Per 35 / 2 (+20)
(1d100)[36]

[-Sentinel-]

Nathias and Nuala

Nathias put his data-slate away and joined Nuala in searching the room for clues.

Spoiler

Show

Untrained Search 22 + 20 = 42. (d100)[93]

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

To Nuala, this seemed to be a perfect little tinkerer’s retreat – at least at first glance. From the scraps on the worktables and the tools hanging on the walls, she could make a confident guess that Gurner had been a technomat. The plastic barrels were packed with bags of bits that she guessed had been sorted by hand – screws of similar lengths and gauges, washers of almost but not quite equal width. The broken clock hadn’t been the only thing Gurner had been working on. There were a handful of simple devices in a halfway state of repair on the counters, including a bulky, old-fashioned handsfree vox earpiece (a very cheap alternative to a microbead) and the chassis of a residential ventilation unit, with its fan and some misshapen internal piping laid out beside it on the workstation. One of the things Nuala had taken for a cabinet at first glance revealed itself to be a disactivated fridge. But the more she looked, the more she couldn’t shake that there was something that just seemed off about this little scene. The property was too big of an investment for a technomat to get by on the sort of small repair odd-jobs that the work in progress represented, Nuala reckoned. Some of the tools seemed a bit too specialised to see very much use, either.

This sort of mechanical tinkering wasn’t explicitly tech-heresy, although who knew – on a bad day, a coghead might take enough offence to write a layman up for it. Still, she hadn’t seen everything – the largest of the cabinets was held closed by a padlock half the size of her fist.

Lacking Nuala’s background, nothing Nathias looked at stood out for him. Instead, he found his attention repeatedly drawn to the impact crater on the inside of the rising shutter door. Standing in front of it, he turned around and looked back into the workshop.

A mark on one of the wooden countertops caught his eye. Coming closer, he saw a deep rip had been cut into the table’s edge. It was smooth down one side, but periodically jagged on the other. There was a dusting of sawdust near it on the wooden surface. Looking down, there was more dust clumped on the floor beneath the damage.

[LeSwordfish]

Longform writers, they think they're so smart. Carys thought. "And who would you recommend for the best non-fiction around here?"

[Haval]

Nuala wonders if she could get away with taking the tools with her. Probably not with the guard here.'He was definitely a technomat, and I think someone was paying him well. Some of this gear ought to be expensive.'

[Bennosuke]

“Uh … let me call someone for you,” the guard said. He lifted a vox handset from the desk. “Ms Amin?” he said into it. A muttered conversation followed. Lyra caught the word “Arbiter”, and then several times “cult”. He flashed Lyra a nervous smile as he put the handset back down. “One of our admin will be along shortly, ma’a- uh, Arbiter.”

Lyra spotted the woman coming to meet her almost as soon as she had stepped out the doors of the small office block on the west end of the site – she had the walk of somebody serious on the way to sort something out. Professionally dressed in a dark blue skirt and matching jacket, as she got closer Lyra could make out thick black hair whose curls had been forced into a neat, tight bun. She stepped into the gatehouse and treated Lyra to a sterile smile. “Arbiter. I am Puan Amin, assistant site manager. Please, come with me. Thank you, Simms,” she said said, twitching the briefest glance towards the guard behind the desk as she turned and led Lyra into the complex. She set a quick pace. They cut across the painted lines on the tarmac guiding vehicles around the plant, heading straight back for the office block Ms Amin had appeared from. Lyra could see the doors of the furnace house directly as they swung wide past it. A few workers in jumpsuits were staring, though whether it was at Lyra or at Amin, Lyra wasn’t sure.

“I understand from Mr Simms the reason for your being here is quite serious, Arbiter …” she said as they walked, waiting for a name. “Esmark-Berzelius Metalworks will assist you in any way we can, of course. I am having the records you requested brought to my office.” Her tone was neutral, as if this was just another professional obligation in a day’s work. When they entered the reception at the ground floor of the office block, fewer people inside bothered to take notice. Most people in the lobby were dressed more like Amin than the labourers outside.

They took an elevator up to the fifth floor, and walked along a carpeted floor, past conference rooms to a large office. Amin’s desk was at the far end; near the door, a young woman in a white shirt and a thin headdress was placing a box of files on a low recaf table, on which already waited a carafe of water and drinking glasses. The employee nodded briefly at Amin and exited.

“Mandi,” Amin called. The younger woman stopped. “How many more?” the manager asked.
“Just one other box, Ms Amin.”
“Thank you,” Amin said. The young woman gave her another nod and went to get the rest of the records. Amin turned to Lyra. “Please let me know what else you might need. Are there specific names you’re looking for?”

Lyra felt near immediate disdain for Puan Amin, her finer than midhive garb, and her sterile attitude. It made it easy for the ex-officer to give the woman an impassioned "thanks" and follow her without a desire to smile or make small talk. She said little as the administrator spoke, offering the smallest of nods in affirmation or denial. She thanked the woman finally, "Thank you for arranging these for me. I hope you understand that it is best that I say as little as possible. We have... suspects, but need more information before anyone deserves to be accused. However, there is one individual whose full file I need pulled. Goes by the name 'Lem'." She proceeds to describe the man in as much detail as possible. "I know it's not much to go on, but all information on this man will be necessary," she adds.

[-Sentinel-]

Nuala wonders if she could get away with taking the tools with her. Probably not with the guard here.'He was definitely a technomat, and I think someone was paying him well. Some of this gear ought to be expensive.'

Mathias pointed at the gouge in the table. "Do you think a chainsword did this?"

If so, the murderers were well-armed.

[Haval]

Mathias pointed at the gouge in the table. "Do you think a chainsword did this?"

If so, the murderers were well-armed.

Nuala will take a look, 'Maybe. I don't like to get too close to anyone who has one of those.' If Gurner had had an accident with some tool wouldn't he have cleaned up the sawdust? 'So if someone swings one of those things at you, you get out of the way as quickly as possible. The chainsword messes up Gurner's table and then someone else finishes him off with their gun. I don't think a chainsword's the sort of thing you could just buy in the main hive, so many we can work out where it came from. Course it could be some souvenir from service in the PDF.' There was probably no way to track that.

'Still doesn't tell us what the Reds were doing here or whether anything's missing.' Nuala will check upstairs to see if she could find a key to that cabinet.

[Thragka]

Carys

The proprietor thrummed his fingers on his crossed arm again. “An odd question, by its nature, at least in the genres your friend asks about. Historical records, one should think, are mostly kept by the noble houses – charting their lineage, confirming their pedigree, and so on. I’m not aware of a, hm, working-class market for historical analyses. On the other hand, technical records would be the provision of the Administratum, or the Mechanicum, depending on the subject matter. The former, I suppose, are mostly public record, for anyone resilient enough to mire themselves in the bureaucracy. The latter would be more difficult.”

He seemed to sense that Carys was not entertained, and took on a stiffer tone. “For general non-fiction, I suppose you could try Bergmann’s. They have no sense of taste, or perhaps are simply incapable of judging based on merit; what you can find in there is mostly dross, I’m sure.” He waved a hand dismissively, and then reached onto a stack of papers on a side table, flicking through the leaves until he drew out the print he wanted. “But for your friend who has come here, of all places, to seek history … I might suggest a playwright. Historical fiction is à la mode at the moment. Quite exaggerated, naturally, but they say the legends always have a basis in truth.”

He handed Carys the flyer. It was a maroon half-page print advertising a performance by masked figures. The Hellions of Arlecchinius present THE COMEDY OF THE CROOKED SPIRES, it read. Calmo’s Recafé, Laxday of 7th Forges. “I saw that performance,” the shopkeeper said. “The Hellions show promise. Their playwright is excellent, a very bright young mind. He may be of interest to your friend.”

Spoiler

Show

I originally meant to run this much quicker as a blow-by-blow conversation, but I got quite busy at the end of last week, apologies.

Nathias and Nuala

The stairs got dirtier as they rose, clumps of what looked like dried greasy mud on the uppermost slats. The dirt took shape into messy footprints on the landing, emerging from the small room at the back. A flutter of cold air blew from the open doorway. Through it, they could see nothing but a small cot-like bed, covered in more footprints and shards of glass from the broken window.

Other doors off the landing lead to a storage closet and a tiny toilet, and the office space that took up most of the first floor. It surmounted the front half of the workshop, looking out over the yard. A plastic desk served as a centrepiece, with the contents of another toolkit spread across it. At one side of the room were a stack of empty boxes and paper wrapping; on the other, under a shelf of leatherbound ledgers, a black matte safe with a huge dent to the door. A large hammer was on the floor in front of it – but it didn’t seem to have been enough to crack open the door.

Lyra

“Of course,” Amin said. “We at Esmark-Berzelius will do everything we can to facilitate your investigation. As for this name, Lem, it rings a bell.” She flicked through the folders in the box on the desk. “But I don’t believe it’s in this set.” After a few moments, the assistant, Mandi, appeared with the second box. She set it down in front of Amin and Lyra, and then, as if at some unspoken command from her boss, stepped back to the wall and waited in silence.

Amin opened the box and pulled out a folder. “Yes. Bozidar Lem,” she said, handing the folder over to Lyra. She continued speaking as Lyra glanced through the papers filed inside. “He’s been a fine employee in the furnace house for a number of years, as I recall. Capable and responsible. Perhaps lacking in initiative.” Lem’s papers seemed to bear this out. His reviews seemed to indicate he’d been a model employee, but had passed up opportunities for promotion. The personnel overview also had Lem’s home address, in a nearby hab-block, and other details.

“Will you be requiring a copy?” Amin asked. “Mandi will get you one immediately.”

[Haval]

After a quick look around Nuala will take a look at the safe to see if she had any idea how to open it. At least there were a lot of tools lying around. 'You know, I could probably find someone to open this if we really needed to.' Hopefully what ever Gurner was keeping in there was more interesting then money.

Spoiler

Show

If possible I'm going to have a go at Tech-Using the safe open. Maybe with a penalty. Security is a rank 2 skill for Scum.
vs. Int 34
(1d100)[38]

[Thragka]

Nuala and Nathias

The blow from the hammer had damaged the numeric keypad over the safe lock, but a few firm prods suggested the locking mechanism was still intact, and still holding firm. Whoever had whacked the door hadn't put any real technical thought into how to accomplish their goal. Nuala reckoned that, with the tools at hand downstairs, a combination of repairing and bypassing the circuits in the keypad would eventually get the door open, but it would probably take her about an hour and a half.

[LeSwordfish]

"Oh no, he's not-" Carys began, and paused for thought. "This is a gentleman of means, put it that way. So, perhaps he's specifically looking for something outside the house's history. Religious history in the hive? Political? Architectural?" She gave the bookseller a wary eye, wondering if he could add to that. Or, of course, a man who doesn't want his family to know he's snooping about them.